Clemence eBook

and lowering her voice to a tone of deep, intense
passion,) I glory in my revenge. I’m the
rich Mrs. Crane, to-day, and you are old and poor,
and faded, and I don’t mind telling you, now
that this is an hour that I’ve longed to see.
You have always been preferred before me, and as I’ve
had to take up with the refuse, it was no more than
natural, I suppose, (with a sneering laugh,) that
I should wait, and long, and hunger, for the love
that you took only as your right. So I waited,
and to-day I triumph in the thought that Deane Phelps’
petted wife is a dependent upon my bounty,
a menial in the house where I reign supreme,
and which knows no law but my will. I
have forgotten how to love, but each day (and I have
conned the lesson well) I learn better how to hate.”

There was a rustling of stiff silk, a door slammed
angrily, and the slender figure left alone with her
trouble, bowed itself like a reed before the storm,
and that wail of heart-broken humanity that has resounded
through long ages, and is yet only a faint echo of
that night so long ago, rose to the pallid lips, “my
punishment is greater than I can bear,” nevertheless,
“not as I will, but as Thou wilt.”

CHAPTER II.

Alicia Linden walked slowly homeward, musing thoughtfully:
“This is a strange world,” she soliloquized.
“Let philosophers air their utopian theories
about its containing the elements of universal happiness.
I know that human nature, as it is now constituted,
is too selfish and mean to arrive at a state of absolute
perfection. Truly, ’men are a little breed.’
’But, in the future, when that which is whispered
in secret shall be proclaimed upon the housetops,’
all our griefs and wrongs shall be recompensed.
Oh, weary women, syllabling brokenly His precious
promises, patient, untiring watcher, whose tired feet
have grown weary of the ‘burden and heat of
the day,’ wait ‘God’s time!’
Listen to the words that have come down through the
dim and forgotten centuries—­a message of
‘peace and glad tidings.’ ’In
my Father’s house there are many mansions.
I go to prepare a place for you.’ Teach
us the lesson of patience, oh Father above! ’Tis
a wearisome struggle. This is a sin-fallen world,
and want and misery abound upon every hand. Is
it true, as another has declared—­’Every
sin is an edict of Divinity; every pain is a precept
of destiny; wisdom is as full in what man calls good
and evil, as God is full in infinitude?’”

Well, God sees, and over all is the loving care of
“our Father who art in Heaven.”

And sometimes, when human sympathy is denied us—­when
the eyes, that should only beam with pity and affection,
turn coldly away, Nature, bountiful mother, stretches
out her arms lovingly, and wooes us to her with an
irresistible, but nameless charm. She cradles
the tired head upon her bosom, presses cool kisses
upon weary, drooping eyelids, and broods over the
slumberer with loving vigils. Under her tender
ministrations our dreams are blessed visions of the
“green pastures and the still waters,”
and the “shining ones” waiting “beyond
the river.”